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" I get thousands of letters, and they give me a feeling of how each book is perceived. Often I think I have written about a certain theme, but by reading the letters or reviews, I realise that everybody sees the book differently. "

Isabel Allende

Feeling

Theme

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" I have learned many things in the 30 years that I have been writing. "

" Although women do two-thirds of the world's labor, they own less than one percent of the world's assets. "

" I was a lousy journalist. I could never be objective. Sometimes I invented the whole story. "

" I am an American citizen and it is my home now. I like the U.S.A., which is not a place too many people have liked since Bush. The U.S. has a young population, and everything can change within a year. "

" We want a world where life is preserved, and the quality of life is enriched for everybody, not only for the privileged. "

" I have written about Chile extensively, and therefore I have read many books on the subject, mostly for research. "

" I feel that telling my secrets makes me less vulnerable. What would make me vulnerable are the secrets I keep. "

Isabel Allende

Telling

Secrets

" I remember my childhood as a horrible time. My mother says that nothing so horrible ever happened to me as the things that I remember. "

Isabel Allende

Time

Childhood

" I'm living in California but I have a place that is mine in Chile and I belong there. I am no longer an exile. "

" I want to have an epic life. I want to tell my life with big adjectives. I want to forget all the grays in between, and remember the highlights and the dark moments. "

" The fact people think that when you sell a lot of books you are not a serious writer is a great insult to the readership. I get a little angry when people try to say such a thing. "

" I have become an American citizen, and I love this country. I think that this country has incredible potential for goodness, an incredible possibility for doing the wrong thing, too. "

" The fact that I am a writer comes from the experience of being cut away from my roots and living in Venezuela, where I couldn't find a place for myself, for years and years. "

" I write until the first draft is finished, and then I feel that I can get out. But, during the time of the writing of the first draft, I don't go out. I'm just locked away, writing. It's a time of meditation, of going into the story. "

" I have lived with passion and in a hurry, trying to accomplish too many things. I never had time to think about my beliefs until my 28-year-old daughter Paula fell ill. She was in a coma for a year, and I took care of her at home until she died in my arms in December of 1992. "

" If you change the way you tell your own story, you can change the colour and create a life in technicolour. "

" I don't want an uneventful and safe life, I prefer an adventurous one. "

" Women have always been courageous... They are always fearless when protecting their children and in the last century they have been fearless in the fight for their rights. "

" I was a very bad journalist. Awful. I would just invent everything. If I did an interview, I had a preconception of what that person should say and I would put my words in his mouth. "

" I was not supposed to be in any way a liberated person. I was a female born in the '40s in a patriarchal family; I was supposed to marry and make everyone around me happy. "

" I can promise you that women working together - linked, informed and educated - can bring peace and prosperity to this forsaken planet. "

" If I had to choose between a relative and a good story, I would take the story. "

" I like historical fiction. I fell in love with New Orleans the first time I visited it. And I wanted to place a story in New Orleans. "

Isabel Allende

Love

New

" Kids are smart: don't underestimate their bull detector. Contemporary kids have access to a lot of information, so don't even try to fool them. I have never been more nervous about my research than when writing for young adults because they pick up every single error. "

" From journalism I learned to write under pressure, to work with deadlines, to have limited space and time, to conduct and interview, to find information, to research, and above all, to use language as efficiently as possible and to remember always that there is a reader out there. "

" Many fiction writers write for the critics or for themselves; they forget the common reader. I never do. I don't think journalism clashes with my fiction; on the contrary, it helps enormously. "

" Eros is very close to death. And both things, in a way, balance each other. "

" Give, give, give - what is the point of having experience, knowledge or talent if I don't give it away? Of having stories if I don't tell them to others? Of having wealth if I don't share it? I don't intend to be cremated with any of it! It is in giving that I connect with others, with the world and with the divine. "

" I think that any writer who is commercial, who sells a lot of books, has to face criticism. Because the more hermetic and the more difficult your book is, supposedly it's better. "

" The world starts to exist, for Americans, when we are in conflict with a place. And then all of a sudden, Afghanistan pops up on the TV screen and it becomes a place. And it exists for three weeks, and then it disappears into thin air. "

Isabel Allende

Conflict

Air